Backing up after breaking a drought
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The 'premiership hangover' - is it a myth or a tangible factor that can contribute to a side's demise after having won a flag? In 2017 the Western Bulldogs' coach, Luke Beveridge, and their players spent a fair bit of time trying to convince the public that the downturn that followed their 2016 premiership win was not a 'hangover'. Not everyone was convinced. In fairness to the Dogs, it's a concept that extremely difficult to quantify. The Bulldogs had their fair share of injuries in 2017, particularly in defence, and they were certainly a contributing factor to the club's below-expectation season. On the other hand, the Dogs were also decimated by injury in 2016, and they won the premiership!
Quantifiable or not, history is littered with teams who have failed to 'back up' after winning a flag — the Dogs in 2017, and Hawthorn in 2008 recent obvious examples — interspersed with those who have turned their premiership destiny into a premiership dynasty, Brisbane (2001-03) and Hawthorn (2013-15) the two cases this century.
While the hangover factor is hard to measure, no such difficultly exists in simply plotting the path of a team, in terms of wins and losses and ladder finish the following season, after it has won a premiership. Success breeds success, so the saying goes, but is that true of teams for whom success has arrived after years, indeed decades, without triumph?
History suggests not.
Taking a somewhat arbitrary approach and defining a premiership drought as 20 or more years without a flag provides 15 such cases in the V/AFL since its inauguration in 1897, the latest being Richmond in 2017. The jury will be out on the Tigers' premiership defence until at least the end of August 2018, but looking at the other 14 clubs to have broken a drought of two decades or longer, not one has been able to follow up their premiership success and go 'back to back'.
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Four of the 14 have made it back to the following year's Grand Final, but all have lost. Of those four, Sydney came closest to go going back to back, falling a solitary point short of the West Coast Eagles — the team they vanquished in 2005 — in the 2006 decider. Since then, Geelong and Collingwood have both followed up drought-breaking flags with near perfect seasons, only to fall on Grand Final day.
In 2008, the Cats lost only one match before Grand Final day as it attempted its first premiership defence in 44 years, only to fall to Hawthorn in one of the biggest upsets in recent Grand Final history. In 2011, it was Collingwood's turn. The Magpies had broken a 20-year drought in 2010 and lost only twice in the 2011 home-and-away season. Significantly, though, the two losses were to Geelong, and it was the Cats who trumped the Pies in that year's premiership decider, preventing the black and white from going back to back.
The fourth case of a side losing a Grand Final after breaking a drought the year before was in fact the first, chronologically, with North Melbourne succumbing to Hawthorn in 1976 after they had beaten the Hawks in 1975 to win their first VFL flag in their 51st league season.
Surprisingly (or perhaps it’s not surprising at all), apart from the four teams to have made it back to the Grand Final the following year, conly one other premiership drought-breaker has made it back to the finals the season after winning the flag. Geelong, the very first VFL drought-breaker in 1925, finished second in 1926 with a 15-3 record, but lost their semi-final to Melbourne.
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At the other end of the scale, the biggest fall from grace for a side that had broken a drought came from Hawthorn in 1962. After breaking through for a flag in their 37th season in 1961, the Hawks fell away badly the following year. They went down to the side they had defeated to win the premiership — Footscray — in round one, and never really got going after that, winning just five matches to finish ninth of 12 teams and an incredible eight games out of the top four.
While the Bulldogs in 2017 slipped to ninth as Hawthorn had in 1962, their slip was not as dramatic in relative terms, as they were theoretically still capable of making the top eight heading into the last round and ultimately finished only a game out of the finals. Theirs is one of many cases of drought-breaking sides falling narrowly short of finals action the following year.
In fact the Dogs themselves had the narrowest of all misses as Footscray in 1955, after they had broken through for their first VFL flag in the previous season. Having won 12 of 18 matches, more than the 11.5 wins of their 1954 premiership year, the Bulldogs missed the top four by just 0.6%. An extra goal, along with one more behind, would have seen them return to finals to defend their premiership.
The Bulldogs are the only drought-breakers to miss by percentage, but two others — Richmond in 1968 and Collingwood in 1991 — fell half a game short of the finals a season after breaking droughts of 24 and 32 years respectively. Earlier in that 1991 season, Collngwood's 'hangover' appeared to last a single hour. The Magpies fell five goals behind Footscray in the second term of the opening round after they had finally won a premiership in 1990, but then blew the Dogs away in the second half to win by 70 points. Theirs looked like being shortest premiership hangover in history, but the Pies stuttered there way through the season before eventually missing out on September action.
Other sides — Melbourne in 1927, Carlton (1939), Fitzroy (1945) and St Kilda (1967) — followed up breakthrough flags with seasons that saw them miss finals by a game or a game and a half.
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So what of the Tigers? Can they follow up their drought-breaking premiership with another in 2018? As we have shown, history suggests it will be extremely tough to do. And if you're an omen seeker (and many Richmond fans have probably become omen seekers over the past 37 years), the prognosis is perhaps worse than you might think.
There are two parallels Richmond can look back on in an effort to foretell their 2018 fate. The first is Hawthorn, whose 1961 premiership broke a 37-year drought, identical in length to the one the Tigers broke in 2017, and the second parallel belongs to the Tigers themselves. In 2017, Richmond broke as drought the year after another side (the Bulldogs) had broken a much longer drought. This mirrors their effort in 1967, in which they broke their own drought the year after St Kilda had broken a much longer one.
If they follow either if those parallels, the Tigers could find themselves in a position that will bring a wry smile to their fans and footy lovers in general, who have long made fun of Richmond's ability to seemingly always find a way to finish ninth. In 1962, the Hawks did indeed finish ninth, and if the Tigers of 2018 follow their predecessors of 1967 and miss the finals by half a game, then they will almost certainly once more finish ninth.
And perhaps, given the cruel twists of fate the footy gods have been dealing out for more than a century, that's as it should be!
Comments
Julien Peter Benney 16 May 2020
Hawthorn’s 1962 case, more than anything, illustrates how much that season was a turning point in VFL/AFL history. In a long-winded way, the modern national competition can be traced to that season.
Between 1937 and 1961, apart from the uncompetitive, patron-less Hawks and St. Kilda between 1940 and 1955, the League generally was more competitive than it had been when dominated by Carlton, Collingwood, Richmond and Geelong in the early years of the 12-club competition. Although its effect was slow to be felt, the Coulter Law slowed down country recruiting by Carlton and Richmond with their vast political and industrial patronage. Those two clubs, who set records for consecutive seasons with more wins than losses between 1927 and 1949, fell into mediocrity in the 1950s.
In 1962, this completely changed. Aided by the expansion of metropolitan Melbourne into unzoned areas and the acquisition of supporters in there, Essendon, Geelong, and soon afterwards Carlton, Collingwood and Richmond resumed mass recruiting from country Victoria. In fact, this “big five” recruited more heavily from the demographically declining country areas than Carlton and Richmond had in the 1920s. Contrariwise, South Melbourne, Fitzroy, Footscray and North Melbourne saw their old supporter bases migrate into these unzoned suburbs, where old club loyalties eroded completely. The previously existing South, North, Footscray and Fitzroy supporter communities were supplanted by migrants from Southern and Eastern Europe with no knowledge of Australian Rules football and a preference to play and watch soccer. Consequently, these four “soccer belt” clubs could not compete for players and supporters with the “big five”, and their management lacked the resources or minds to discovered a route to competitiveness before the zoning of new suburbs and of country Victoria was introduced in 1968.
The three south-of-Yarra “amateur belt” clubs of Hawthorn, St. Kilda and Melbourne, although they retained and expanded extant supporter bases, also could not compete with the “big five” for country players – except for St. Kilda’s development of the Mornington Peninsula and adjacent areas. They had less money than the “big five” and a strong “amateur ideal” in south-of-Yarra Melbourne meant administrators of “amateur belt” clubs were less willing to spend to gain on-field success.
Hawthorn, after winning the premiership in 1961, remained financially impoverished and unable to compete for players outside its own zone. Whilst Essendon, Geelong, Carlton and latterly Collingwood and Richmond recruited heavily from this year, Hawthorn lacked the money to recruit outside its own zone or gain supporters in new suburbs. The consequence was that, in contrast to numerous top country recruits for the “big five” clubs, Hawthorn had to rely on its metropolitan zone, and this was entirely inadequate in 1962.
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